Exhumation work in Poland: Ministry of Culture talks about preparing Ukrainian expedition

The first task for Ukraine is to equip and send an expedition for exhumation work in the Polish village of Yurechkova and at least begin research that will allow us to say that soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army may indeed be buried in this place. This was stated by Andriy Nadzho, Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications for European Integration, during a briefing, as reported by UNN.

We will build our work as follows. If we talk about Puzhnyky, the Poles did not manage to find a mass grave where 42 people were exhumed on the first try. The first expedition may not necessarily bring an immediate result, as we provided geolocation data to the Polish side where we want to conduct this research (in the village of Yurechkova – ed.). But a lot of time has passed, and we based our geolocation on the memories of historians and witnesses, so we have a chance that after the first attempt, there will be a second. The first task for us is to equip an expedition, send it to the site, remove the top layers of soil, and at least begin research that will allow us to say that we have indeed found something, that soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army may indeed be buried in this place.

He commented on the reburial of exhumed bodies in Puzhnyky.

If in Puzhnyky we understood that for us the best story was to rebury them in the place where they were exhumed. Then, for example, Zboishche is a different story. The reburial will not take place where we conducted the exhumation. The reburial will take place in Mostyska – which is about 40-50 km from Lviv. This is in an old cemetery where Polish citizens have already been reburied. Accordingly, when we have the first results of the research on Yurechkovo, and the expedition really finds something, then we will discuss and communicate with the Polish side.

In addition, according to him, during the preparation of the expedition to Poland for the work, the Ukrainian side maintains communication channels with law enforcement agencies.

We understand how emotional this issue is for Polish society, now we are focusing on ensuring proper security for our expedition. We maintain communication channels with law enforcement agencies, with our diplomats.

Oleksandr Alfyorov, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, stated that the Poles have given Ukraine the opportunity to work in the future with four sites, objects for exhumation in Poland.

The list of objects does not end there. We are talking about the fact that there are many such objects. During this time, we have established joint communications at higher levels. This is a very good signal that we are approaching a point where this story will be on equal terms.

He emphasized that there are many more objects that can be exhumed.

We can even start from the 1920s, when the armies of Ukraine and Poland jointly fought against Lenin's Russian army, which was advancing, and there are such mass graves where Poles and Ukrainians who died at the hands of Russians are buried, when they attacked Ukraine in 1920 and went to Poland. There are other exhumation sites. This is the period of 1939, when Stalinist Russia and Hitler's Germany started World War II. There are mass graves where, if we are talking about military personnel, citizens of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are buried. I remind you that the army mobilized not based on ethnic principles, but on citizens. There were Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, and other nationalities who then made up the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Let's add

The Volyn tragedy — ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians and Poles that took place during the Nazi occupation in 1943–1944.

In the interwar period, during and immediately after World War II, the Ukrainian and Polish peoples experienced dramatic, inhumane times. The source of mutual animosity even before World War II was the ill-conceived national policy of the then authorities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the frivolity and lack of respect for the rights of citizens of Ukrainian nationality to cultivate their own national and religious traditions shown by Polish politicians and settlers in Volyn. Ukrainians in the territories of the then Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth experienced attempts to erase their national consciousness and subordinate it to the dominant nationality — that is, Polish, often through repression, pacification, destruction of churches and places of their memory.

Context

At the end of September, expeditionary work is to begin on the search and exhumation of Ukrainians located in the village of Yurechkova in Poland.

In January of this year, Ukraine and Poland exchanged lists of sites for the search and exhumation of remains from "mutual historical conflicts."

The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory reported that on September 6, a reburial ceremony took place in the village of Puzhnyky, Ternopil Oblast, for remains found during exhumation work. These people died in 1945. In total, 42 exhumed bodies were reburied.

In Lviv, the stage of a joint Ukrainian-Polish exhumation expedition on the territory of the former cemetery in the Zboishche microdistrict has been completed. According to preliminary estimates, researchers found the remains of 40-50 people. The expedition included Ukrainian and Polish forensic experts, anthropologists, and historians.